The Trump Administration Wants to Strip a Grandmother of Her U.S. Citizenship and Kick Her Out of the Country

While Donald Trump can struggle to maintain the same position on any topic for more than a few hours, he's been remarkably consistent on one thing: His administration, all the way back to his presidential campaign, is explicitly anti-immigrant. While he and his officials may say they're opposed to undocumented immigrants, their actions and policies have been overtly antagonistic even to immigrants who came into the country legally. He's cut back the already pitifully low number of refugees the US admits and stripped thousands of immigrants of their protected status.

Now, they're taking aim at yet another group: naturalized citizens. Last month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, announced that it would be forming a task force dedicated to investigating "naturalization fraud," tracking down people who may have lied or falsified their identity to get citizenship. The task force would then bring charges to have that person stripped of their citizenship and immediately deported.

At The New Yorker, Masha Gessen wrote that the new task force's objective "sounds reasonable enough. It’s the apparent underlying premise that makes this new effort so troublesome: the idea that America is under attack by malevolent immigrants who cause dangerous harm by finding ways to live here." And immigration rights activists have worried that the Trump administration would bring the same aggressive, disdainful, and accountability-free approach that it's shown with deportation and border detention.

Those concerns appear justified. On Monday the Miami Herald published a report about Norma Borgono, a 63-year-old secretary and grandmother who immigrated from Peru in 1989. The Department of Justice is now suing to have her denaturalized and deported. The DOJ's justification is Borgono's "minor role" in a $24 million fraud scheme perpetrated by the company that she worked for—specifically she prepared paperwork for her boss who then pocketed money from fraudulent loan applications. According to the Herald:

When the feds caught wind of the scheme, Borgono cooperated. The secretary never made any money beyond her regular salary and helped the FBI make a case that put her former boss behind bars for four years. On May 17, 2012, Borgono took a plea deal and was sentenced to one year of house arrest, four years of probation and $5,000 of restitution.

Working two jobs, she paid off her restitution and was relieved of her sentence early. Two years after she put it all behind her, Borgono received the letter notifying her that the U.S. government wanted to take away her citizenship.

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The stated reason was that Borgono became a U.S. citizen after the fraud scheme started. Although she had not yet been charged when she applied for citizenship, the Department of Justice is now arguing that she lied by not divulging her criminal activity on her application.

Borgono's family is still in shock from the charge, and told the Herald they "had no idea this kind of case was even possible."

While Borgono's case is complicated, it also highlights what immigrant rights activists have been concerned about since the Trump administration announced its denaturalization campaign. Prior to this push, the government would strip people of their citizenship for serious crimes, or for hiding that they belonged to organizations like al-Qaeda or the Nazi party. The Trump administration has said that the primary motive is to track down and deport people who gamed the immigration system—for example, people who were deported at one point and re-entered the country and became citizens under a false identity.

None of that is what happened with Borgono. And her case is evidence that the Trump administration won't let a petty thing like US citizenship get in the way of its war on immigrants.

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